Budget: Curb Spending, Don’t Increase Taxes
Regarding taxes, to avoid the “T” word, have you noticed how colorful and clever the language of our legislators has become? When trying to explain current thoughts, plans and solutions to the budget crisis, not only are legislators using common terminology, they have developed a language unique to the conundrum of our current monetary shortfall, replacing expressions like higher fees, levies and taxes with obfuscations like “backfill,” “recaptures,” “reverse cuts” and, my favorite, “revenue-enhancement measures.”
With such clever minds in Sacramento you would have thought that legislators would have recognized that uncontrolled spending, $3 to every $2 of income, was going to create a huge problem. If legislative spending had matched income, California, instead of having a $35-billion shortfall, would be enjoying a surplus like the one available to the Legislature and governor at the time Gov. Gray Davis first took office five years ago.
What legislators need to do to halt the flow of red ink, now and in the future, is to curb spending, not increase taxes.
Darwin M. Ochs
Lancaster
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